Reshoring & FDI Practice
Stand up American operations on time and at scale.
When a company commits capital to a new U.S. site, the schedule is set long before the first hire. We advise reshoring and foreign direct investment teams on workforce strategy, then deliver the people who keep the ramp on plan.
Speak with our teamWhy this practice exists
For large-scale buildouts, workforce is a schedule risk, not a recruiting workstream.
Semiconductor fabs, biomanufacturing campuses, and data centers are being announced into labor markets that were not built around them. The risk is in knowing whether the region can support the plan, what pay actually moves talent, which skills are scarce, and where early turnover could threaten the schedule.
Our reshoring practice is consultative before it is transactional. Before hiring begins, we map the market, pressure-test role requirements, and set the compensation and sourcing strategy. During ramp, we run hiring as an operating system, with clear ownership, pipeline coverage, and delivery metrics tied to the project timeline.
We build workforce planning into project execution, so labor risk is managed before it becomes a schedule problem.
How we engage
A workforce operating model to support your firm's mission.
We help clients turn workforce assumptions into an executable plan. From market validation through ramp hiring and early-tenure retention, our work mitigates critical labor risks.
Labor-market diligence
Before a ramp plan is locked, we pressure-test the labor market the way an investor pressure-tests a deal. Most greenfield sites enter markets where every qualified hire already works for someone else.
What we deliver
- Talent Supply and Demand Mapping
- Competitor Employer Census
- Compensation Strategy That Moves Candidates
- Role-Family and Shift Modeling
Sourcing architecture
One channel is a single point of failure. We design and run parallel channels that feed a single intake, so no local tightening can stall the ramp.
What we deliver
- University and Co-op Pipelines
- Experienced Hires from Adjacent Industries
- Reskill and Upskill Program Design
- National Relocation Campaigns
- Government and Workforce-Board Programs
Phase-gated delivery
Hiring is delivered in gated phases: prove the engine on the first cohort, then scale. Every gate is a decision point where the client can expand, hold, or exit.
What we deliver
- Embedded Recruiting Pod on the Ground
- Weekly Candidate Slates Against Quota
- KPI Scorecards: Time-to-Fill, Acceptance, Retention
- Quarterly Phase-Gate Reviews
Incentives and partnerships
Federal and state programs can fund a meaningful share of workforce build-out, if someone knows how to put them to work. We map the programs and broker the partnerships.
What we deliver
- State and Federal Workforce Funding
- Registered Apprenticeship Programs
- University Curriculum Partnerships
- Economic Development Coordination
The engagement model
Gated phases. Exit rights at every boundary.
Large workforce commitments should not require large leaps of faith. Engagements are structured so the client never carries more risk than the next phase.
First phase
Prove
A first cohort of hires validates the engine: sourcing yield, time-to-fill, offer acceptance, and early retention, measured against contractual targets.
Second phase
Scale
Main hiring volume across shifts and role families, with the channel mix rebalanced against what the proof phase actually showed.
Final phase
Sustain
Specialty roles, redundancy against attrition, and a documented handoff so the capability stays with the client after we step back.
Governance runs through the engagement: an embedded recruiting pod on site, weekly slate reporting, monthly KPI readouts, and a joint steering committee at the executive level.
Discuss a ramp planTalentCraft field record
U.S. critical-technology buildout ·2020–2026
Five years inside the CHIPS and Science Act buildout.
A timeline of the public record and TalentCraft’s fieldwork, side by side: from the act’s first draft in 2020 through the five-year review and the regional work now taking shape.
CHIPS for America Act at 5 · Rayburn 2172 · July 23, 2026
Selected field photographs
TalentCraft recordPublic recordInside TalentCraft
2020
June 2020Public record
Congress introduces the CHIPS for America Act to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research and strengthen a critical supply chain.
2021
January–June 2021Public record
CHIPS is authorized in the FY2021 NDAA. The Senate passes USICA with $52B for domestic chip capacity.
2021Public record
The Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy is founded at Purdue.
2022
August 9, 2022Public record
The CHIPS and Science Act is signed into law: $52.7B for semiconductor programs. Commerce establishes the CHIPS Program Office that fall.
Inside TalentCraft
TalentCraft maps the fab corridors, role families, and labor pools behind each announced site.
2023
February 2023Public record
The first commercial-fabrication funding round opens.
June 2023
TalentCraft joins the Krach Institute’s Advisory Council.
Matt Vuckov is named to the Advisory Council of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue. The firm’s working premise becomes the institute’s shorthand: “Trusted talent = trusted technology.”
Inside TalentCraft
Building trusted-talent networks for critical industries: vetting standards and candidate pools built for trusted-technology work.
September–December 2023Public record
The national-security guardrails rule lands; BAE Systems takes the first incentives award.
2024
February–April 2024Public record
Preliminary terms reach GlobalFoundries, Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and Micron. SK hynix announces a nearly $4B advanced-packaging facility in West Lafayette.
May 2024
Fieldwork starts where the capital is landing.
Advisory-council meetings and 16 Tech sessions in Indianapolis; introductions to Indiana economic-development officials.
July 2024
SEMICON West, San Francisco.
TalentCraft joins the industry’s flagship U.S. gathering and returns in 2025.
September 2024
CHIPS and FDI at the UN General Assembly.
TalentCraft takes the workforce case to UNGA week in New York: conversations with investors and economic-development leaders on where reshoring capital lands and who staffs it. The Purdue Daniels School engagement deepens alongside.
Also in September
TalentCraft hosts its own workforce forum.
The firm convenes a session on staffing the emerging corridor.
November–December 2024Public record
Commerce finalizes the major manufacturing awards.
December 5, 2024
Trusted Tech Summit, Washington.
TalentCraft is in the room as the Krach Institute unveils the Global Trusted Tech (xGTT) Standard; the workforce case joins the trusted-technology agenda.
Inside TalentCraft
TalentCraft publishes an H-1B analysis for chip employers; the reshoring staffing thesis takes shape before demand.
2025
January 2025
First corridor sit-down in West Lafayette.
A standing presence begins in the Purdue corridor.
Early 2025
Matt Vuckov founds and leads ASA’s Reshoring Task Force.
Tapped by the American Staffing Association, TalentCraft’s CEO stands up the industry’s task force on reshoring advanced manufacturing, alongside his chairmanship of ASA’s Engineering, IT & Scientific council. The staffing industry organizes around reshoring with TalentCraft holding the pen.
March 2025Public record
Calls in Washington to repeal the act meet TSMC’s added $100B U.S. commitment.
March 2025
TalentCraft brings workforce strategy into site selection.
TalentCraft joins one of the Midwest’s largest site-selection forums, bringing a workforce-strategy lens to the talent supply, labor-market depth, and hiring feasibility that shape location decisions.
March–June 2025
Fieldwork widens: Texas, California, Oklahoma, Minnesota.
Critical-industry visits span Houston, Silicon Valley, and Midwest fabs. The corridor map is now national.
April 2025
SEMI Expo Heartland, Workforce Development Theater.
The workforce case reaches SEMI’s stage.
May 2025
SelectUSA Investment Summit, Washington.
Foreign direct investment hits the same constraint: people.
June 17, 2025
SEMI publishes TalentCraft’s workforce thesis.
“A Surprising Partner Can Answer America’s Trusted Tech Supply Chain Problem.” Written from inside the Reshoring Task Force, two years of field notes enter the industry record.
August 2025Public record
The federal government converts Intel grants into a roughly ten percent equity stake.
November 17, 2025
Trusted Tech Summit 2025: TalentCraft joins the Global Trusted Tech Network.
On the Krach Institute’s Washington stage, Matt Vuckov gives the buildout its workforce doctrine: workforce strategy is national strategy. TalentCraft is named to the Global Trusted Tech Network at its launch, and the Purdue corridor partnerships formalize the same season.
November 2025
Supercomputing 2025: the AI-infrastructure practice signs its first clients.
TalentCraft works the SC25 floor and converts it: three new AI-infrastructure clients, with placements inside four months.
December 16, 2025
Holiday Quantum Talks, Chicago.
Matt Vuckov takes the panel with One Region CEO Matt Wells, EeroQ, and Velocity Catalysts, and puts numbers on the market: roughly 136,000 quantum roles ahead, seventy percent of them open to workers without advanced degrees. The same month, his essay on America’s talent engine answers The New York Times.
2026
February 2026
Fab exposure: TSMC and West Lafayette.
Site-level views of what staffing a leading-edge fab takes.
Early March 2026
SEMI’s DC Fly-In: Capitol Hill and the White House.
TalentCraft carries the staffing industry’s case into member advocacy with Congress and the agencies running the buildout: Commerce, Labor, USTR, and OSTP.
March 16–19, 2026
NVIDIA GTC, San Jose.
TalentCraft works the AI-infrastructure floor: GPU cloud, quantum computing, storage, and silicon. Dozens of talent partnerships enter the pipeline, and the corridor playbook extends to AI infrastructure.
March 26, 2026
TalentCraft co-hosts Quantum & Community, Chicago.
The firm convenes the city’s quantum builders and takes a panel seat of its own.
April 2026
Data Center World, Washington.
The industry forum on the data-center buildout. TalentCraft leaves with a sharpened read on where power, silicon, and construction meet labor, and publishes the argument: capital follows talent that is ready to execute.
April 27–28, 2026
A Washington salon dinner, then the U.S.–Italy Trusted Tech Dialogue.
Matt Vuckov joins the Krach Institute and Walbridge’s construction-industry salon dinner, cabinet leadership and members of Congress at the table. The next day at the Italian Embassy, the allied trusted-technology agenda takes shape with the White House, Energy, State, and Commerce in the room.
Inside TalentCraft
The corridor playbook becomes a data-center go-to-market: the same roles and pipelines, mapped to a faster buildout.
May 9, 2026
The Future of Staffing, Chicago.
The reshoring case goes to the staffing industry itself.
July 2026Public record
The equity model extends to additional chipmakers.
July 21–22, 2026
Two days of partner meetings in the West Lafayette corridor.
PRF convenes its annual gathering of corridor partners with TalentCraft among them; a day of site meetings with corridor employers and the region’s workforce institutions follows. The standing presence pays off in access.
July 23, 2026
CHIPS for America Act at 5: the review convenes on Capitol Hill.
The Krach Institute’s Semiconductor Working Group brings the five-year record to the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing room in Rayburn 2172. TalentCraft is on the panel.
September 16, 2026Public record
One Region announces plans to launch ReShore Indiana at its September 16 annual luncheon, positioning the Greater South Shore corridor for advanced manufacturing, technology infrastructure, foreign direct investment, and major job creation.